Hello, my name is Peter and I will be your host for the duration of your stay. I believe in freely available digital privacy for all, and I spend my free time writing little applications to further that cause. This site is a collection of these little applications, as well as any security related musings I may have, which end up in the blog section. You'll find the navigation bar to your left, and my deflated ego to your right.

What is Encryption?

Well I'll tell you. Encryption is the act of modifying data so that only the person who encrypts it can decrypt it. That is, the data you are encrypting is essentially locked with a digital key in such a way that only that key can unlock it. What I described would be called a symmetric encryption algorithm, where there is only one key used to both encrypt and decrypt data. The most notable symmetric key algorithms are AES, 3DES, and blowfish. There are also asymmetric algorithms where key pairs are generated in such a way that when you encrypt something with one key, it can only be decrypted with its pair (a different key). These keys are refered to as public and private keys. The most popular asymmetric algorithm in use today is RSA, but could soon be replaced by eliptic curve cryptography. But enough of this jibery joo, that's what wikipedia is for, lets check out some programs.

This is a little stand-alone application that encrypts and decrypts files using a password. It uses 256 bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) with key strengthening techniques to ensure the security of the file. Encrypted files are saved with the ".simp" file extension.

This is an instant messaging style secure communicator (codename The Cheese) that is still under development. Communication is done over the User Datagram Protocol (UDP). You must know the IP address and port of the person you want to communicate with. All secure communications are encrypted with AES using a key size of 256 bits, extremely strong encryption. It also supports the sending of images.